Bomet Governor Isaac Rutto yesterday denounced reports that he had agreed to abandon his referendum call as claimed by President Uhuru Kenyatta’s director of political affairs Joshua Kuttuny.
Emerging from a five-hour meeting with Rutto, Kuttuny said the governor had agreed to suspend the proposal to have county government allocations raised to 40 per cent of the national revenue. Kuttuny said Rutto had agreed to give the national government an opportunity to prove that it is committed to devolution.
In exchange, Kuttuny said, Rutto had asked him to prevail on Deputy President William Ruto to stop using county representatives to undermine him. Rutto said he is willing to give dialogue a chance as long as the national government is willing to honour the agreement.
Kuttuny said he had been tasked by both President Uhuru and Ruto “to mediate and unlock stalemate that was nearly creating hostility between Rutto and the Jubilee government”. Kuttuny said he was meeting Rutto at the behest of many of the callers of a Kass FM radio talk show on Tuesday who had asked him to broker a truce between Deputy President Ruto and Governor Rutto.
He said the callers were concerned that the referendum had now become a purely Kalenjin affair portraying it as a battle of supremacy between the two leaders which threatened to split the Jubilee coalition. The coalition’s primary partners are Uhuru’s TNA and Ruto’s URP.
“We have had a fruitful five-hour meeting with governor Rutto and we have agreed that he will now shelve his push for a referendum as the national government has already indicated that it is committed to fully funding the county governments,” Kuttuny said.
“I congratulate Rutto for honouring the meeting. The sideshows are now over and those who were hoping to reap from the situation should come up with a new game plan. The Jubilee house will sit together and resolve any emerging issue,” he said before leaving for Mombasa to brief Uhuru and Ruto on the outcome of the meeting with Rutto. Yesterday, Rutto denied that he had agreed to abandon his demands for a referendum and claimed Kuttuny had misrepresented the lunch meeting they had at Hill Park Hotel.
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